


but you say that's exactly how this grace thing works

by wagamiller



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, His Last Vow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 07:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wagamiller/pseuds/wagamiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’s not sure how long she’s been there but then again, he’s not entirely sure how long he’s been there, either. </i>
</p><p>Molly visits Sherlock. Missing scene for His Last Vow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but you say that's exactly how this grace thing works

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written for this fandom before, but I just couldn't get this scene out of my head after seeing His Last Vow. Can probably be read as shippy or friendship!fic depending on your own preferences. 
> 
> Set mid episode, after Sherlock returns to hospital.
> 
> Title from Mumford & Sons _(Roll Away Your Stone)_

\-- 

Sherlock wakes slowly, with more than a few false starts. 

The first time, it’s dark. The next, possibly dawn. There’s something about the angle of the shadows on the wall that should provide a little more precision, but he can’t seem to put it together. His thoughts run like treacle - steady, but slow as the drip that’s hooked up beside him. 

He blinks, thinks, remembers.

He hurts. 

He shuts his eyes again.

When he wakes properly, it’s much later. Maybe even tomorrow. And he has company. 

Company is a petite figure curled in the chair beside his bed, head down as she studies something that’s balanced on her thigh. 

He’s not sure how long she’s been there but then again, he’s not entirely sure how long _he’s_ been there, either. 

He blinks until the blur of sleep disappears and she comes into sharper focus beside him.  

Her seated position, feet tucked up under her, says comfort. But she’s too still, every part of her frame held carefully static. She’s barely even breathing. It’s a Kindle she’s holding, but she’s not reading it. At her reading speed she should have changed the page twice since he started looking. He watches a moment longer but her fingers still don’t move. It’s not fiction that she’s dwelling on.  

Him, then. Obviously. She knows he’s awake. 

Still, she doesn’t look away from the book that she’s not reading.

She’s offering him an out, a chance to close his eyes and slip off back to oblivion for a little while longer. If he wants to. If he’s not ready.

Her kindness hurts only a little less than the bullet wound.

He clears his throat.

She looks up at that, gives him a tight smile.  

“You’re awake.” 

Since she pretends she’s only just realised this, he plays along.

“Hello, Molly.” 

His voice comes out a barely recognisable whisper. Without thinking, he moves to reach for the jug beside his bed.

She winces before he does, anticipating the pain. He holds himself still after that, pressed carefully back into the mattress.

“You got shot, remember?” she scolds, unfolding herself from the chair to pour him a drink 

“Momentary lapse.” He tries to shrug. Another mistake. “Probably ‘cause of the morphine.”

Her brows knit further at that and he winces yet again, this time entirely internally. Medically administered or not, drugs might not be the best topic to embark upon so soon.

She holds out a small plastic cup and he can’t resist a quip as he takes it from her. “I expect you’d like to throw that in my face.”

She huffs a laugh. “Tempting.” 

The moment of levity doesn’t break the tension as he’d hoped. By the time Molly takes the cup back from him, her face is carefully neutral again. She’d be convincing too, if she wasn’t biting the inside of her lip.

“I brought you something to read,” she changes the subject, reaching into her bag and loading the side table with journals. “They’re just some old BMJs, you’ve probably read them already.”

“Still, better than the fire escape instructions.” He nods to the poster on his door outlining the escape route. “I memorised them last week.”

“Course you did,” she mutters, rolling her eyes.

“Go on, then,” he prompts, his voice clearer after the water.

“Go on, what?”

“Say what you’re obviously dying to say.”

He closes his eyes, readies himself for the first of what will likely be a series of lectures on the idiocy of his decision to leave the hospital without being discharged.

It doesn’t come. 

He opens his eyes again. Molly is back in the chair, sitting on her hands and eyeing the door without realising she’s doing it.

“I’ve got nothing to say, Sherlock.”

He doesn’t even need to be him to see it, any idiot could tell what this show of indifference is costing her.

“Course you do,” he prompts. It’s strange, how much he needs to hear it. To hear if she still cares. Mary’s not the only one who risked burning their bridges to best Magnussen.  “Why else are you here?” 

“I’m babysitting,” Molly says, an undercurrent of venom seeping into her tone. “There’s a rota.” 

He scoffs. “I’m not going anywhere this time.”

“'Course not. There’s locks on every window and a guard outside your door.”

“For god’s sake.”

“Your brother’s been very thorough.”

“He always is.”

“He was worried,” she spits out. “We all were.” 

“It was important. I took a calculated risk.”

“You could have died!”

She shouts that last retort and he knows that neither of them are talking about him leaving the hospital, anymore.

“I was glad. When I realised that you got shot, I was glad.” She bites the words out, barely moving her lips. “Because when they first called and said you were in here, I thought _overdose_. That’s what addicts do. Overdose.”

The silence that follows seems to last an age.

Molly shoves herself further back in the chair, the bright spots of colour in her cheeks fading slowly. She looks small and sad, and she crosses her arms like it might hold back all the bitter things she wants to say. 

He just looks at her. The woman he goes to when he thinks he might die. The woman who stops it. 

This time he’s gone and proved exactly what he warned her once, he isn’t everything she thinks he is. Now’s the time he really finds out her answer - does she still want to help him? 

He takes a breath, releases it and tells her, “Thank you for the slap.” 

Of course she doesn’t know anything about the slap he means, but the memory couldn’t have existed without the reality, so the point still stands. 

Though he doesn’t come out and ask how he’s doing, she must hear the question somehow because she dips her head and says, “Not bad." Then she raises her eyebrows, waits for what should come next.

He obliges, sincerely. “And I am sorry, Molly.”

Her eyes soften. “Better.”

He allows himself a smile. “Good.”

She returns it, just about. He allows her the courtesy of pretending he doesn’t see the tears that go along with it.

She lets him pretend to fall back asleep.

Later, when he opens his eyes again she is gathering her coat and slipping her kindle into her bag.  “Greg’ll be here in a minute. I’d better go.”

“There really is a rota?” he groans.

“Yes.”  

She eyes him sternly. “Right, don’t alienate the nurses, ok? You’ll regret it. And don’t read all those at once,” she adds, with a nod to the journals. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

“Resting’s boring.” 

“I will slap you again, if I have to,” she warns. 

“I’m counting on it,” he tells her, and means it.

She smiles properly then, so wide it makes her eyes crinkle. On anyone else he might say it aged them, but it makes Molly look prettier than ever. He blames the morphine for why he notices. It’s definitely to blame for why he takes her hand and brushes a kiss against her knuckles before she leaves. 

And if it’s tapered as low as possible when he checks the indicator after she’s gone, that obviously must be a glitch.


End file.
